[ExI] battle tanks to a five yr old

[Kelly Anderson]

On Thu, May 31, 2012 at 2:17 PM, Tomasz Rola <rtomek at ceti.pl> wrote:
> On Mon, 28 May 2012, Kelly Anderson wrote:
>> On Sun, May 27, 2012 at 1:28 PM, Tomasz Rola <rtomek at ceti.pl> wrote:
>> > You may not like my diagnosis, but to be frank, you never mentioned you
>> > only wanted to read optimistic ones.
>>
> First things first - congrats for using on this noble list such words as
> "ass" and "pussy". Welcome to the club, let's this tradition continue in
> the name of calling things by their real name, while we fearlessly drink
> vodka and eat sausages.

LOL. I'm not afraid of any word that conveys the proper tone and idea.

>>   Steven Pinker (have the book, but not that far into it yet) has
>> documented recently the march away from violence civilization has
>> taken. He sees it as a good thing. I think I do too, for the most
>> part.
>
> I don't hear much about Mr Pinker. I have just completed reading an
> article "War really is going out of style", here (probably a copy of the
> one from nytimes, which is behind a register-wall):
>
> http://www.oregonlive.com/opinion/index.ssf/2011/12/war_really_is_going_out_of_sty.html
>
> and a page from wiki (which I guess talks about the book):
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Better_Angels_of_Our_Nature
>
> and a critique of the book, quite interesting one:
>
> http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/john-gray-steven-pinker-violence-review/

I read through this article, and the biggest complaint that he seems
to have is that Pinker didn't refer to all of the "great thinkers" and
left out those that promoted violence. OK, that's a fair complaint, I
suppose. On the other hand, nowhere in that article did he dispute
Pinker's actual numbers. So I suppose that he's making a case for the
idea that violence will return. But he doesn't even really make that
case. So if the point of the article was to say Pinker is wrong, he
didn't make a very convincing case of it.

> To sum it all in short, I don't buy the idea that we, as a species, are to
> be less and less violent.

I think it has more to do with memes than genes.

> Especially if thanks to democracy and wealth,
> because I somehow fail to see how they can make me more benign.

Have you been to an elementary school lately? Have you seen the
anti-bullying campaigns they are shoving into the heads of our kids?
That kind of brain washing is what turns boys into pansies. And I
think it works.

> In a meantime, wars are going on like they did, in parts of the world less
> covered by the news - because it sometimes happens, I hear, that a
> journalist is given an easy to decide proposition, either stay and be
> killed or STFU and go away.

But wars in out of the way places are fought with less scary weapons,
in areas with somewhat more sparse populations, and the total number
of deaths per capita, globally, goes down.

> I must add, there is a group of people - and I think it is easier to find
> them in the so called middle class - that very easily gets entrapped into
> all kind of hiperoptimistic bullshit. Last time I noticed this, it was the
> idea of human/life/intelligence friendly Universe. Holy frak. If
> supernovas, neutron stars sending gravitation waves and magnetic pulses,
> black holes and their death-ray jets, gamma ray bursts and, oh, huge
> asteroids - we exist only thanks to being not close enough to all those
> attractions, so far, because each of them could cook us good bye - if this
> is friendly, I wonder what unfriendly is. Maybe some Universe-wide
> snuff-movie-like orgy orchestrated by Satan and Minions, Ltd. BTW, never
> forget about "friendly" entropy, making our efforts to not decay too fast
> all the more interesting. I could agree Universe is very dangerous place
> to live, and this made me eager to tread lightly and learn dilligently.
> But friendly? There are days when I seriously consider starting smoking
> pot, like a kilogram at a time.

You can worry about all of that stuff, OR you can say, it's been a
very long time (if ever for some risks) since we've faced that, so
statistically, we are reasonably safe. And go on living. It's called
optimism. It isn't hyperoptimism for me to live in the kill zone
radius of the Yellowstone volcano. If it goes off most of you will die
slowly, while I will have a merciful quickish death.

> So, this idea that one day we will become those angelic creatures, good
> and nice... No, I don't think so. Rather, I think we humans are beasts and
> in best case, we can become self-controlling beasts.

Or, eventually, they'll implant something in our heads to make us
controlled beasts. They'll take away our ability to react violently.
We may even sign up for it in exchange for something we can't imagine
at this point.

> Now, a problem. Self-control seems to be unfashionable.

How so???? It's all the rage!

> The idea of having
> a gun and not killing everybody who we see out of the window seems to
> gradually fall out of favour. Quite the opposite, we can easily remember
> news when some wanker shoots passerbys but I don't remember any news or
> documentary about someone who leads normal life while having magnum or
> remington stuffed under a bed. Isn't it interesting?

Having a gun is not usually about inflicting violence, but a hope that
we can prevent violence from being inflicted upon us. Being a fan of
statistics, however, I don't have a gun because the chances it will be
used on me or one of my kids, intentionally or accidentally, is
greater than the chance I'll need it against a bad guy.

> I have, however, heard other stories, counterweighting those grim options
> mentioned. Like of Mr Gichin Funakoshi, who started learning Karate at the
> age of 13 to improve his poor health, later became master himself but
> fought his first real life fight age 72 (AFAIR - I have read it megayears
> ago and cannot find anything on the net) when he helped a woman attacked
> by a thug. Now that's the man. He did not go on killing journey, just
> practiced the art for his whole life.

And as far as I know, self defense with the martial arts is a rarity,
statistically speaking. I'm not against the martial arts for self
control, for inner peace, for physical fitness. But to protect
yourself, it isn't the greatest bargain in the world in terms of money
or time.

> This story I have found, in a strange turn of fate. Well worth a time:
>
> http://blog.aikidojournal.com/2011/12/16/katsujinken-applied-in-real-life/

Ha, funny story, with a good lesson. Could use a little editing, kinda longish.

> I can also see a problem with idea that some external body would do better
> in controlling our impulses than we ourselves could. It sounds very close
> to what religions like us to believe. And there is plenty of evidence,
> they can easily fail. The fallacy of many people is that when this
> external entity changes, they expect the outcome changes too. However, the
> controlling of impulses was never the goal of external entities,
> especially when we consider they would become obsolete once impulses
> finally came under control.

The Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes explains a lot of the decrease in
violence. Before the dispassionate third party, in the form of the all
powerful state would dish out just rewards, there were cycles of
vengeance and revenge. The Leviathan stopped those cycles, and brought
with it a more peaceful way to deal with conflict.

> If you still don't get it, do you watch Animal Planet? I sometimes do. It
> was surprising to see how predators, despite all their claws and teeth,
> fail to have a dinner so often. Now, imagine there was some animal
> parliament, manned (or rather, animated) by lions, gnus etc. And now this
> parliament starts sending messages, like "dear gnus, you can now saw off
> your horns, we are entering period of unprecedented peace". Yes, like hell
> we are, with no way a gnu can oppose their opponents, a peace would be
> round the corner. Something along a deadly calm.
>
> So, maybe one day I will go after this book but I doubt I will run after
> it.

I hope to finish reading it in a few months... it takes a while when
you read ten books at a time...

>> But being a pussy with regards to resorting to violence isn't
>> precisely the same thing as taking it in the ass. There are many ways
>> to punish and/or change behaviors that do not use violence.
>
> I think there is huge misunderstanding about violence. As I tried to show
> above. The only alternatives presented to the public are, either be mad
> killer or submissive pussnik (which is preferred, because we don't want
> be mad and bad, do we).
>
> There is no mention of other possibilities. Not good, because there are
> quite some to choose from.
>
> Perhaps it has something to do with a hypothesis, that pussniks,
> instinctively feeling they have no value as people, compulsively try to
> acquire it. Thus they make great programmable shopping bots.

We'll make great pets. Once they put a leash on us.

>>   Most of the complaints I have heard over the last ten years is that
>> America is still too violent, in sending young men to war
>> "needlessly". And then you come along and say we aren't violent
>> enough. So which is it? :-)
>
> Oh, no. I would never say that. I don't like the violence. I just want to
> have it in my pocket, like a trump card to be played if needed.

Can't disagree that it is a potent card.

>>  Now, for a scary thought from the diseased brain of Kelly... Imagine,
>> if you will, a few hundred of these little autonomous quadcopters each
>> carrying a half ounce of C4 explosive shape charges and a couple of
>> pieces of shrapnel going after a high value target. Imagine his
>> security detail trying to protect said HVT from hundreds of these
>> speedy little fellows, each programmed to avoid being swatted 600
>> times a second. Each trying desperately and cooperatively to land on
>> said HVT's head (or heads of said security detail as a secondary goal)
>> and explode. It's a nightmare for a security detail to even think
>> about. How would you devise a defense against that other than stay
>> inside ALL the time? Eventually, even staying inside won't be enough
>> because you'll have autonomous robots that can knock down doors. I
>> doubt a security detail would carry enough bullets to shoot them all
>> even if they could hit one with each bullet. This is the kind of thing
>> like 9/11 or the Kennedy assassination that would work very well once,
>> and then maybe not quite so well after that.
>
> Well, there is no reason (other than being shy) that could prevent future
> Kennedy from making his own robots. Like, anti aircraft artillery robots.
> With his 9mm taped to a sensor and few electric motors. Ammo is cheap.
> Stones are even cheaper. Even lasers are (or will be) cheap.

That's why it would only work the first time. 9/11 won't work again
either. Hell, that strategy didn't work until the end of the morning
of Sept 11!

-Kelly